Wednesday 29 July 2009

Big Love

About a month ago, I filled a box with some treats for Simon, Ds younger brother who you may remember is residing in Ethiopia at the moment. The postal cost was shocking, but we rarely do Xmas or birthday presents for him, so we decided to go ahead anyway..

I have just got home to receive this lovely email from him!!

************

Hey guys,

Just wanted to really thankyou for the care package which arrived yesterday. I had Frosties for breakfast which was amazing, and I think my housemate was almost crying with joy as he ate his coco pops - he's been out here a while!

It's great to have some magazines to plow through - interesting to see Country Life in there - and I'm looking forward to the DVDs too. Have only seen Dr Strangelove, and then as a rather confused child. Plus I'm just reading the Odyssey, so I'm looking forward to watching it afterwards.

And then, of course, the Waitrose Earl Grey. That would be a massive treat at home, so out here it's like some kind of miracle. THANKS!

Hope things are going alright back home. The talent show sounded, entertaining?

Keep well and keep safe, thanks again, it was such a massive treat to get it.

Big love,

Simon

xxx

***

I think he and his housemate are rather happy bunnies :-) Its great to know that the box arrived safely and that the rather strange and varied content are being appreicated.

Thursday 23 July 2009

After the Triffids...

I thought you might like to see our front garden after my mum and I removed most of the Triffids (Evening Primrose plants)

If you click on the photo, you will get a nice view of the buddleia bush now. It looks a bit bare after all those plants have gone, but the heather and the californian poppy etc now have space to breathe.

Monday 20 July 2009

Sunday and Harry Potter

With my voice slowly returning, Douglas and I decided to take Martha and Leo (my brothers twins, aged 9) to see the latest Harry Potter film!

We collected the energetic pair from their home, and went to the cinema. We got there a bit early, so we camped out in the bar for about an hour.

Martha and Leo read their books, but we also spend some of the time looking at a magazine showing films due to come out in the next few months. As part of this discussion I got both kids to look at the various adverts - for movies and related products, and tell me who the adverts were aimed at.

I think Martha grasped this better than Leo, but all of us spent some time looking at the adverts and working out who the films would appeal to, which was fun, and a little educational for them!

The film was good, but not great, but the kids enjoyed it very much, and were buzzing about it afterwards.

We decided to eat out after the film, and Martha chose Bella Italia - both kids love Italian food, and had half a peperoni pizza each. I had a pizza with peppers and goats cheese on.. it was edible but not really very nice (and incredibly tough to cut!)

It wasnt the best place for poor Douglas to eat.. the special of the day was a seafood risotto, so he ordered that, but we didnt realise it was in a spicy tomato sauce which is a total "no no" for him. When it arrived Douglas said "I cant eat this" to the waitress, who was rather defensive and said that when she was telling me the specials, she did say "spicy tomato sauce". Whether she did or not I dont know.. my slight deafness might mean I just didnt catch that bit (he had gone to the loo when the waitress arrived earlier).

D ordered again, and got his new spag carbonarra fast but sadly it was barely edible.. the sauce was very thin and the meat - supposed to be smoked pancetta - was more like cheap processed and not smoked ham!

When we got the bill, they had charged us for both the risotto AND the carbonarra!!! As you can imagine, we didnt leave a tip, and we will NEVER go to any Bella Pasta restaurant again.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Gardening Therapy

It was a lovely sunny afternoon today, and because I was feeling better I decided to harvest our first crop of potatoes!

A few months ago, we had some potatoes that we hadn't used fast enough, and they had started to sprout in our cupboard. When I lived in Loughborough years ago, I loved growing potatoes, so I decided to do the same again here. We don't really have anywhere that would make an easy potato patch, so I got a large tough black bin liner, filled it with home made compost and buried some of the sprouty potatoes at the bottom. I made holes in the bottom of the bin liner, and as the potatoes grew, I filled it up with more and more lovely soil!

This is what they looked like when they were green and growing.




A few days ago I noticed that the foliage had died off and gone yellow, so that is harvesting time! I gently scraped away a few bucket loads of soil, and as if by magic, potatoes began to appear.. and more.. and more.. and more!!

I took all of the soil out of the now tatty bin liner, and pulled out more little treasures until I had a whole 6lb of our very own potatoes!!


I called my mum who was in town, got her to get the tram to ours, and gave her some of my wonderful harvest. She and my dad frequently pop over and help with the garden (they help with lots of other things too) so its really nice to be able to pay them back a little with some tasty, incredibly fresh home grown tatties!

Whilst my mum was visiting.. we decided to do something about the front garden. The evening primroses had taken over the world (er no sorry.. just the front garden) as you may remember from a post a few weeks ago about Triffids.


This is Triffids growing up and up and up...



This is the Triffids earlier this week! We do have a few other plants in our garden but the Evening Primrose really had taken over big time. Can you spot the buddleia flower peeping through?




My mum and I spent a very pleasant hour or so together. I dug the plants up, and she carted them off down the back garden to be composted when they have all wilted a bit! To finish off, my mum swept the path, and I hoed the garden to remove footprints and a few weeds.

It looks a lot more sane now! (Photo to come tomorrow).

I drove my mum home, and collected Douglas from work which is very close by. Both parents were very pleased with the potatoes, and also with the flapjacks I gave them too!

When D and I got home, I cooked tea for him.. Lamb koftas (minced lamb from Farmers Market) frozen peas (from Waitrose) cooked with mint (from our garden) and .. the peice de la resistance... a dozen tiny but incredibly tasty home grown potatoes!! He was a Very Happy Man.

YUM YUM YUM!

Not Swine Flu

I went into work as usual on Tuesday, but over the last few days i have been developing an upper respitorary infection that also made my inner ears tingle a bit. I didnt feel fantastic, but I enjoy my job so went in.

By about 10am, my voice was going croakey through coughing, and as was feeling hot and rubbishy. I called to explain something to a customer and by the end of a 5 min conversation I knew I just couldnt carry on, so I packed up my stuff, explained to my boss, apologised and went home. Douglas, bless him, came and rescued me, and I went straight to bed.

My friend, Malc, who sits beside me, said that going home was for the best. Its nice when someone at work can say "Im glad you are going home" and you know its because they want the best for you, and its not malicious!

Its now Thursday evening, and my voice is still very hoarse, but Im feeling much better in my self. I hope that if I rest my voice as much as I can over the weekend, I can make it back to work for Monday.

Photos from last weekend

Loony and little Amy did come to the Farmers Market/Garden Centre with us, and as you will see from the photos, we had a lovely time, especailly in the "petting" farm!

Amy adores animals.. we found this out as soon as she got to our house, as she was fascinated by Billy, our solid, not very fast moving cat. Billy coped very well with this toddler sized worshiper and even coped when she stroked him a few times! (Way to go, Billy boy! Well done little Amy!)

This love of animals was also evident when we went out as you will see in the photos.

The mini farm was perfect for Amy.. there were goats, cows, sheep and a few rabbits - she rushed around patting any animal she could get her little hands on! This was a goatlet that seemed very happy to be petted.






Just as we finished going round, I took this photo. As you can see we timed everything nicely to make the best of the weather. It began to rain soon after this was taken!! This is a lovely photo of Loony aka Leonie and Amy :-)




After farmers market and farm, we were all pretty tired, so we went home and had a good rest. A successful day!

Saturday 11 July 2009

The Weekend

On Thursday my friend Loony and her daughter came up to visit. She lives in Bristol where we met whilst working for Nat West there.

Loonies little one - Amy - who is my "Odd Daughter" (no, not god daughter, but similar). Amy is two and has got cute down to a fine art. Its lovely to see her doing little things for herself, like eating, and wiping her mouth when shes done!

I worked on Friday, but she and Douglas went into town and had a good day - I wished I was with them too!


This is the cheeky little lady herself.


Today, Saturday, we had a late start, and headed off to a local villiage carnival which Id been told about through work so we decided to give it a go. It turned out to be a rather small afair in the local park.

We didnt stay very long, and when we got back to the narrow side road where we parked, we saw a single decker bus parked nearby, the driver sitting on the road nearby, and some police near our car! My first thought was that the bus had hit our car, but as we got nearer, we realised that the gap left between our car and those parked the other side of the road was too narrow for the bus to fit through!!

We moved our car as fast as possible, apologising profusely to the bus driver and the police for causing an obstrcution. As we loaded Amy into her car seat, I chatted to the policeman, and explained we had no idea that it was a bus route. There were no markings on the road and no bus stops visible. The policeman said he was new to the area too, and agreed it was not clear. Had we not arrived as soon as we did, we might have got back to find out car had been towed!!!!!!!!!

The police (i hope) put bollards on the road to stop anyone else innocently parking where we did, and make sure that the same problem dosnt happen again in years to come!!

Tomorrow, Douglas and I are off to a garden centre that has a farmers market happening!! Loony sadly says she is too tired to come with us, so she will stay home whilst we go out and give her some peace.

Small Douglas update

Im glad to say Douglas is feeling much much better!

He has been diagnosed as an insulin dependent diabetic (last week). He has had great help from the hospital and the diabetic nurse - hes been given a special pen with a cartridge of insulin, ready to crank up to the right dose and inject in - even though his t-shirt if he wishes!!

I've been very stressed over the last couple of weeks, and once or twice the cracks have shown, but we are over this blip, and hopefully entering a nice long smooth bit!!

Douglas and I appreciate the support we have had from friends and family keeping in touch- leaving messages on here, and by other means too :-) It really does help!!

Thursday 9 July 2009

At last.. a huuuge email from Simon! (have 20 mins spare to read it)

Eventually I tired of luxuriating in Bahir Dar, doing very little despite good intentions, and decided to head south for the final leg to Addis.

Those of you who were getting rather sick of my continuous attempts to coin new superlatives for the magnificence of the scenary here will be glad to note that this part was anything but spectacular. It was gently rolling but with occasional volcanic lumps & bulges, as if a giant had been trapped under England and tried punching his way to freedom. That would be an England full of monkeys, though.

It was nice though because the local tribe was famous for caring for its natural forests, which meant that there was a variety of trees rather than just the standard Eucalyptus. the locals did take this passion quite seriously, and you couldn't walk down a road without seeing someone break off into the forest, snap off a few twigs, and emerge with them stuck behind their ears, ready to fasten them to the fronts of their bikes or vehicles.

It was a nice place to wander round for a couple of days: peaceful, which makes a change for Ethiopia. Perhaps no-one hassled me because no tourists came there, and few people spoke English. I climbed one hill and a shepherd followed me up singing shephardy songs, but then
waved at me and left when I got to the top. Perhaps he was intimidated by the guys throwing Capoiera moves at the top, though again they were friendly enough. Having said that I got the first kids throwing stones at me in ages on the way down - they didn't even ask for money, just launched straight in. Cunts.

The next day was spent in pure tranquility, wandering round a perfect blue crater lake with a monastery amidst the trees, where the monks and worshippers smiled at me whilst carrying out their very chilled out thing, and monkeys leapt from branch to branch. I climbed a few of the volcanic profusions and saw some kind of ibex/tik tik/thingy, which was nice.

It was then time for the final leg, down across the Nile Canyon. Golly. It's big. Really, really big. Apparently it's the second biggest canyon in Africa. Which I'm sure was easy to measure. It's
been pretty good heading up from the sea to the source and seeing how it changes all the way up. Anyway, when you get to the other side (after an hour or so of very low gear bus journey) you're in Oromia, the land of the biggest of the 85 nations who live in Ethiopia. Their language has only recently been written down, and they took the logical step of doubling any letters which they emphasise, which does make them look a bit rreetaarddedd. We stopped for lunch in a small
town, and upon stepping down from the bus all the lepers in town started dragging their bodies across the road towards me. This was a bit much for a day with a half four start.

But then, finally, I made it to Addis. After over 2,000 miles, I've reached my destination for now. It felt good. To be honest, by Ethiopia I've been slowing down, and wanting to settle for a bit, so
it felt good to feel I'd achieved my aim and could have a rest for a bit.

I was initially staying in the Piazza area, at the top of Addis. It's the area with the cheap hotels, though cheap is pretty relative when you consider it was more than 50% more than what I was paying in the most expensive hotels outside the capital. £5.50 a night, and I didn't even get my own bathroom! Mind you, I was staying in a colonial era hotel with balcony bigger than every bedroom I'd had on the trip so far. It was Ethiopia's first hotel, and still had the notice explaining that customers had to pay for whatever they ate and drank.

The Piazza area was pretty cool, in the centre of most of the historical architecture. This varies between Armenian influenced stuff, and a few Art Deco-ish (emphasis on ish) from the Italian
invasion. It's also the main nightlife zone, though I found it all a bit much for when you're on your own, though I did hear my favourite Ghanan 70's funk tune so I felt at home. I did at first wonder why on earth there were a row of bedrooms opposite a loud dance hall, but remembered how most Ethiopians like to finish a good night out.

The problem is that with all the Faranji visitors, it's where all the scam artists hang out. But because it's also the main nightlife area, you get a lot of friendly, slightly pissed Ethiopians who just want to say hello. To be honest though, it's not too hard to outwit the scam artists, as they're just not that good at it. Arabs try hard to take everyone, including other Arabs, whereas Ethiopians just haven't got their hearts in it:

"Hey, my friend, where are you from?"
"Scotland."
"No way! My brother lives in Scotland!"
"Really. Where abouts in Scotland?"
"Umm. T h e c a p i t a l ?"
"Hmm. You mean London?"
"Yes! Yes! Of course! London, how could I forget!"
"So he lives in London."
"Yes."
"In Scotland."
"Yes! Anyway my friend, how would you like to go to a party with
[drops voice dramatically to a hushed whisper] some colledge girls?"
"Why are you whispering?"
"Well, you know what they say about colledge girls?"
"What, they're studious? They're cleverer than you?"

Eventually they get the hint. My ever expanding jewfro has helped: I keep getting people approaching me saying:

"I know you! You're from Israel!"
"No."
"Germany."
"No."
"America."
"No."
"Canada."
"No."
"England."
"No."
"Australia."
"No."
"Sweden."
"No. Look, have we ever actually met?"
"Yeah, I said 'Hi!' to you in the street a few days ago."
"Right, so we're tight then."

In general, though, the people of Addis have a bit more dignity than elsewhere in the country and requests for cash from randoms are lower, though there are quite a lot of legitimate beggars. I did get one middle aged gentleman in an imaculate, pressed, 3 piece suit double take when he saw me and ask for "one Birr." It does seem totally unrelated to financial well-being.

In fact I've read an amazing book out here which has given me some insight into Ethiopian culture. It's called "The Mountain People", and it's about a tribe of people called the Ik living in northern Uganda. Whilst they are pretty extreme, especially as they are basically starving and have been kept off their traditional lands, some of the character traits they show seem to be shared by Ethiopians. For instance, their typical greeting is "Give me tobacco." One guy, returning to his village to discover the mother he hasn't seen for 2 years is dying, goes and stand outside her compound:
"Give me food," he says.
"There is no food," she replies. So he leaves.

Also, the Ik always try and help people for the sole reason of getting an obligation out of people. They always try and do work in secret, so their neighbours won't find out and come and 'help' them. I think this is one of the reasons that Ethiopians have such problems with capitalism - they just don't understand the concept of providing services that people want; instead they will try desperately to provide some 'help' you little want or care for, which may actually hinder you, then ask for money.

In fact, I've realised I'm more of a capitalist than I thought. Whilst I've accepted the fact that Faranjis pay more for most things, I get upset when prices aren't what they say on menus.

"Ah, you're looking at the old menu."
"Oh fine, where's the new menu."
"There isn't one."
"!!!"
"But it's only one Birr more, why do you care?"

Why indeed do I care? I think it's down to the fact that it's been inculcated into me that without correct information the economy can't function. Which is something that Ethiopia prehaps demonstrates.
'When is the bus/how many are there?','How much is the national park?', any such questions will generate any number of answers. They also have the African habit of not wanting to do the dis-service of answering no to any of your questions.

"Are you serving Tibs?"
"Yes."
"Can I have some?"
"Mmmm. Maybe you want something else. We don't actually have any Tibs."

Still, I'm enjoying my life here in Addis. Thanks to a guy I met for 10 minutes in Lalibella, who said he'd send an e-mail round on my behalf, within a couple of days of arriving I had moved into a beautiful villa in the hills, where I had my own guards, maid & cook. And it's free. And so beautiful. Lovely gardens (with giant lettuce patch). Brilliant view from the balcony. Two pet turtles, and two lovely dogs.

Basically, the guy who lives there was flying to Germany and motorbiking back, and wanted someone to look after the dogs whilst he was away. Despite my generally negative views of dogs in abstract (not helped by being kept awake by barking dogs EVERYWHERE on this trip), these dogs are actually lovely, and I have enjoyed taking them on walks in the surrounding hills - though the locals seem generally petrefied by them, for some reason. Other duties have included
helping the cooks son with his homework, which I really got into, especially the science bit, surprisingly. Doing lots of experiments, trying to remember the difference between the endocrine & exocrine system, etc.

I'm not sure if I'll be staying here when he comes back this Sunday, but he was dropping some hints about how the place was too big for one person, and we get on pretty well. Even if I have to move out, it's been 6 weeks in an amazing place rent free. Even with the general expensiveness of Addis, I'm living on less than a fiver a day.

I also got dropped in with a big group of cool 20-something 30-somethings, which was cool. On the first Sunday I went to a Barbecue, and despite it being my first time on red wine for a long
time I managed to stay the right side of the charming/shouty line. I think.

Unfortunately, after about a week soaking up life in paradise, I fell into a Faranji trap. Every second day in Ethiopia there's no power - they call it load sharing. On the days the electricity is meant to be on there's often a brief outage or two. On one of the evenings when there wasn't any lights I went out to my favourite local restaurant. What I couldn't know was that someone had dug a five foot hole just in front of it, which I promptly fell into. It was quite a shock, and was wet (smell tests later confirmed my hope it wasn't a sewer).

It was, however, about the most painful thing that had ever happened to me. I'd just been reading Zola's 'Joie de Vivre', not his best but maybe one of his key books, where he articulates clearly his most important concerns - namely, given life is almost perpetual pain, why do we carry on? I was just thinking how lucky I was to be in generally good health and not have any particular pain in my memory. Well, that's changed.

For days I was in agony, and couldn't put any weight on my ankle at all. I spent a lot of time lying on the couch reading or watching bad TV - I was astonished by how poor the film of The Avengers was. After a week I could consider walking, but progress was way too slow. Luckily Tez recommended some tips and excersises (knows what he's talking about shock!), and slowly but surely I've improved. It wasn't helped by the fact that my laptop took a Long time to get over here, twice as long as the Post Office suggested, and that I'd hobble down there to see if it had arrived almost every day.

It also wasn't helped by the fact that the rainy season had begun. It's not the most violent rain I've seen, not like the Central American rain forest, nor does the rain particularly last that long.
but there's thunder and lightning every day, and the rain is dense: it's like watching a bucket of water fall outside the window. There just doesn't seem to be much space between the drops, which fall in a constant flood.

But finally, with my ankle feeling significantly better, I headed into the main Post Office in town, and deep within the vaults they found my package. Oh wondrous day! It feels like the jounrey has finally begun. It's been really exciting to get stuck into the novel, which is coming along pretty well, I think. There's loads of mini-crises, but they all seem to get resolved, and I'm making fair progress. It's definitely still only a first draft, but on the other hand, I'm focussing on character and story now so that I can get it all out. Once that's done, I can go back and improve the aesthetics.

On the days without power, once I've run out of battery, I come into a posh hotel's lobby which has wi-fi and good coffee. It's full of Faranjis on laptops - I've met some of my friends here.

So life is pretty sweet, now. My ankle's good. My novel is under way. I'm generally pretty excited that I'm actually doing what I've always wanted to do. Watching all that crap TV and doing A Lot Of Reading has meant that I'm less tempted by distractions. It's all good. except the powers that be only gave me a 3 month visa extension so it looks like I'm going to have to go to Somaliland during Ramadan and get a new one. Bah.

Anyway, send me all your news - what are your summer plans? Are you feeling the green shoots of recovery? Tell me all.

Ciao,

Simon

Sunday 5 July 2009

PLEASE VOTE FOR WESTBOURNE

Hi readers..

Could I ask you to spare a few moments of your time to help my nephews and niece?



They would be very grateful if you could vote for their school in this competition, because they would love to have a summer holiday treat at the local leisure centres.

WESTBOURNE SCHOOL are in 2nd place at the moment.. please spare a moment to follow this link and vote for their little video :-)

VOTE WESTBOURNE.. CLICK HERE :-) thanks!!

Saturday 4 July 2009

Much Improved Douglas ejected from hospital :-)

The hospital have given Douglas a good service and MOT, and apart from a few minor adjustments on Tuesday to his Insulin levels, hes home and much improved!!

The Diabeties was on reason he was feeling rotten and grumpy, so if he does that again, all I have to do is push a small carton of apple juice into him, or 6 jelly babies to get his blood sugar up again!!

Its a bit like knowing what sort of oil to put in your car to improve its performance lol

(Im getting my own back on Douglas, who just told a freecycler who picked up my old computer that women are hard work)

Bad Douglas (back on normal good form Douglas)

Im back to being Mrs Happy Anna again!

A better day and a great evening!

Friday was much better at work :-) My knee is still very sore from where I fell and grazed it, but its nothing that won't mend in time.

I spent about 3 hours doing "callbacks". We have a new group just started doing the most basic switchboard calls to get them used to the system.

Some callers press the wrong option when they call, so quite a lot of query calls get through to these newbies, as well as the basic "can you put me through to Mr X" type calls - the only type they should be getting.

When this happens, our newbies make a note of what the call is about, and the name and number of the customer and hand them in, and yesterday I got to sort out a whole load of these :-) It makes quite a nice change knowing a bit about what your caller wants before you get on the phone to them, so I cleared a good chunk of the ones I was given. Very satisfying!

Chris, a very nice bloke on the facilities team worked his last day with us, before moving to a different part of the country to be with his partner. Some of us had arranged to meet up for a meal that evening to wish him well on his way.

I rushed home, fed cats (they always come first on the list when I get home) cooked a couple of chops for Douglas, heated up some mash, cooked some peas and threw it all into a lunch box, got myself ready to go out, and went and did the meals on wheels thing again for him in hospital.

D was in good spirits.. he has a strange pen like thing for giving himself his insulin (hes now an insulin dependent Type 2 diabetic!) so he gave himself a shot through his t-shirt which is rather cool - and tucked into his dinner. I took him a beer as well, and the whole lot made him very happy.

Good news.. he saw the diabetic nurse today who was, D says, very pleasant and very chilled out, and he dosnt have to change his diet at all! yay! The other good news is later today (Saturday) he will be evicted yet again from the Big Brother House.. err no.. I mean hospital lol!

Douglas, this is Anna (not Divina) speaking. Please leave the Big Brother House!

After the flying visit to Douglas, I went on to join my colleagues at a rather unusual "all you can eat" restaraunt, that does Indian, Thai and Chinese food! The food is good quality, and the variety is pretty good too. Both quality and variet are better than other "all you can eat" type places I have been, and even Douglas liked it when we went ages ago!!

The food and company was a great mix. I got to sit next to my friend Rose from facilities, and opposite Alan, one of the team leaders in the office who gives me a lift to work most days.

At the end of the meal, some of the group were heading into the centre of town for a gig, and some heading home, so I piled 4 of them into my car, and gave them a lift. It was slightly out of my way, but I decided that the cats wouldnt mind me being a little later home than I could have been, and it saved my colleages a taxi fare!

I crawled up the stairs to bed, and that where Im heading again now, as at 5am I really should still be sleeping :-)

Friday 3 July 2009

Thursday - a very bad day with a better ending

I went to work as normal, but was looking forward to the afternoon, when I was planned in to do something a bit different from normal - involving helping the latest training group. I had been looking forward to this all week.

Sadly, at about 10am I was told my services were not required for this, and being tired, and quite stressed over whats happening with Douglas, I didnt react very well at all, and ended up - quite honestly - making too much of a fuss about it. I was bitterly dissapointed that I wasnt needed, but later, when I understood why, it did make sense and was an entirely reasonable and logical decision.

I apologised to those I needed to say "sorry" to, and spent the rest of the day feeling very very down. I was so glad when it was time to go home!

I decided that before rushing out to see Douglas, I really should make myself a proper meal, so I made me a Thai red curry stir fry with veg and marinated tofu. I ate it with rice, and a bit of lime juice sprinkled on top! Yum. Douglas hates hospital dinners, so I cooked him some chops, and made some mash, and then did meals on wheels.

The meal on wheels was very much appreicated, and eaten with gusto! He is feeling fine in himself now - just need to get his blood sugar stablilsed, then he will be home with insulin to take on a regular basis, we think! Douglas, bless him, tries to see the good side, and said "at least I will get free prescriptions now!"

Having had a nice visit, I walked up to the car, and managed to trip over a bump in the road. I landed on my right knee, grazing it, and putting a hole in the top of my foot, and twisting my left ankle a little too.

Oh what a day.. can I order a Groundhog day please? After my bad day at work, then causing myself a lot of pain by falling over I really felt as though the day was a total right-off.

I got home, limped in, and cleaned up my knee, and watched some Telly. I checked my emails and lo! there was a message from Body of Sound...

GOOD NEWS AT LAST!!

I have been offered a place to start with the choir for their new term in September :-)

I had an early night, and Im feeling a bit more human this morning. The knee hurts when I bend it, and I still feel worried about poor old Douglas (nothing new there) but I will survive the day!

More posting soon.. oh, and the cats say Hi. Billy wants to know if any of you have any spare cat treats.. he says I dont feed him!! (Lies.. all lies!)

Wednesday

On Wednesday Douglas went to his outpatients clinic and had his normal blood test and went home having posted a "Care Package" off to Simon in Addis Ababba.

I got a call to my mobile from the Clinic saying Douglases resulsts showed very high blood sugar, so I phoned Douglas and the end result is back in hospital yet again!

Douglas drove to my work place, then I took him to the hospital and left him being taken to his regular ward, where a bed awaited. I rushed home, collected his pillows, his breathing machine.. books.. all the normal stuff he needs, fed the cats and went back.

Having delivered all the home comforts and a kiss, I vanished again, as I had a concert to go to in town. I saw a group of singers at Christmas called Body of Sound and was so impressed I wanted to join them! They were hosting a concert in town so I had to hurry off.

The concert was great, and I got to chat with some of the members who seem very pleasant. I now just had to wait to hear if they have a place for me.

I got home quite late, but it took a while for me to unwind before I was ready to sleep.